Hongdae Street Art Festival

A street mural for part of the ‘Hongdae Street Art Festival’ at Hongik University in Seoul. The piece was created with a freestyle approach and emerged into this large, yellow character known as the ‘Yellow King’. Size is 6 x 3 metres. We then had the opportunity to extend the piece onto another wall space which we covered in strange creatures and characters.

The first piece we created was based on a loose idea that we wanted to present a foreigners view of the diverse culture that South Korea has. However due to our freestyle approach to most of our work, the piece began to form into something different and eventually evolved into a large character which we identified as the ‘Yellow street spirit’. We thought it was appropriate as we wanted to give viewers and the local community something positive, happy and uplifting to look at. The ‘Yellow street spirit’ became a spirit that looks over the street, protects the neighbours and brings good luck to those that pass. The piece has a humorous element and a light hearted touch and uses a vibrant colour scheme. We also became interested in Korean mythological creatures whilst engaging in this project.

The second piece was produced with a similar approach and we both used our free style skills to create an organic, vibrant piece filled with quirky characters and interesting creatures. This piece was named, ‘Strange forms’. We hoped that onlookers would be interested in the characters and take a closer look at the fine detail. We also had a sense of humour and a lot of fun when creating the characters and wanted audience members to have a similar reaction.

It was a great opportunity for us to create both pieces and we are keen to do more projects like this is South Korea.